AI tech aims to help patients catch disease early, even ‘reverse their biological age’

In humanity’s quest to live longer, healthier lives, technology — particularly artificial intelligence — is playing an ever-bigger role and expanding into more areas of health care.

A California-based medical technology company named Prenuvo, for instance, offers full-body MRI scans that leverage AI to screen patients for over 500 conditions — including tumors, aneurysms and cysts — in less than an hour.

Now, Prenuvo is announcing a partnership with Cenegenics, a Las Vegas-based company that offers “personalized performance health age management” for its patients. It will monitor their bloodwork for over 90 biomarkers in an attempt to slow the biological aging process.

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With the partnership, patients of Cenegenics will have access to Prenuvo’s full-body AI scans, which will help fill in any gaps and provide doctors with a better picture of patients’ health.

“We are driven by a shared vision of enhancing both healthspan and lifespan in our pursuit of transforming the health care paradigm from reactive to proactive,” said Prenuvo co-founder and CEO Andrew Lacy in a press release announcing the partnership. 

“By combining Prenuvo’s advanced diagnostic-quality imaging capabilities with Cenegenics’ steadfast dedication to healthy longevity, we’re helping patients get data-driven insight into their baseline health and make lifestyle modifications before it’s too late.”

Cenegenics’ patients will have access to Prenuvo’s whole-body scans at participating locations, including in Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, New York, Dallas, Chicago and Boca Raton. 

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Cenegenics has collected more than 25 years of longitudinal data on its patients, CEO Kristy Berry told Fox News Digital in an emailed statement. 

“The biomarkers found in our blood provide amazing insights about our health, wellness and the likelihood of disease due to cellular inflammation,” Berry said. 

“Our biomarkers tell the tale of a lifetime of decisions we have made with regard to nutrition, exercise and sleep.”

“As we age, our biomarkers tell the tale of a lifetime of decisions we have made with regard to nutrition, exercise and sleep.”

Cenegenics aims to help patients “reverse their biological age” by working with their performance health team to achieve biomarker results that are equal to a person many years — sometimes decades — younger than they are. This is achieved through a strict program of nutrition, exercise, sleep, nutraceuticals and prescription medicines, Berry explained.

Now, with the Prenuvo partnership, Cenegenics will fill in any gaps in patient data through the use of AI scanning.

“We are actively exploring how AI can assist in the recommendations our physicians make to reverse biological age,” Berry said. “We see AI as a valuable addition to the experience and expertise we have accumulated over our history and look forward to the additional insights it can provide.”

A focus on early disease detection

Prenuvo’s AI technology aims to improve patient outcomes by catching warning signs that are too small to be detected even by the best medically trained eye, Lacy, the CEO, told Fox News Digital in an email.

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“Everything we know about disease is based on diagnosing it at a chronic or advanced stage,” he said. 

With AI, he added, “we are working toward identifying the early beginnings of disease with the hope that we can intervene even earlier than we thought possible.”

Prenuvo’s research team is studying the early stages of disease progression in every organ, from measuring the curve angles of every vertebra of the spine to evaluating the cortical ridges outside the brain, Lacy said.

“We believe that using AI to quantify very small changes over time will enable us to determine normal aging and how the people we scan are tracking, organ by organ,” he added.

On average, Prenuvo scans alert one in every 20 patients to a life-saving diagnosis.

Mona, a mom of two children under 2 years old in the East Bay of California, is one example. (She did not share her last name.)

A couple of weeks after having her second baby, she was feeling a lot of fatigue and continued to gain weight. 

“We are investing carefully in AI in innovative and scientifically based ways.”

“Something just felt off,” she said in a video interview provided by Prenuvo.

With a recommendation, she got a full-body MRI scan at one of Prenuvo’s locations. The young mother was shocked when the results showed that she had thyroid cancer.

“It just wasn’t even on my radar,” the mom said.

Because her cancer was caught early, it was treatable. After surgery and lifestyle changes, she is now cancer-free and thriving.

Another patient was Ryan Crownholm, a former military member who ran a demolition company in Los Angeles. He’d been exposed to toxins over the years and chose to get a Prenuvo scan.

“I really had no expectations of finding anything,” he said in an interview with Prenuvo.

Crownholm was stunned when his doctor called to tell him the scan had detected a large mass on his kidney. He’d had no symptoms at all. 

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After a biopsy, the doctors determined it was stage 3 cancer.

“For me, to catch it so early, it’s been a blessing,” he said. “It was as simple as having my kidney removed and going on with my life.”

‘Investing carefully’

As AI continues to grow in popularity, Lacy pointed out that there can be risks of inaccurate claims about what the technology can do. 

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“While there is a lot of excitement in the field of AI to replace the diagnosis that radiologists make, what we are most actively excited about … is how AI can help us understand early signs of disease progression and quantify a person’s health trajectory,” he said.

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In the health care arena, he stressed, it’s essential to use these technologies to add value and diagnostic accuracy.

“We know this will take time, so we are investing carefully in AI in innovative and scientifically based ways.”